Proud of: his economic forecasting record. His fiscal policy was actually based a lot more on judgement than people think, as he always played silly buggers with those rules when it came down to brass tacks. But under Brown the Treasury became a really excellent forecasting organisation and has consistently got it right. So I'd say his policy was based on (excellent) judgement rather than rules.

Apologise for: PFI, which was his main contribution to the general strip-mining of public trust in the government.

Things to do immediately: I am still pushing a moratorium on new government initiatives, so I'll say that.

Things to do while PM: Build a north-south road across Africa. It's not a particularly good idea but it would probably do more good than harm and at least you could tell whether he'd done it or not.

I should point out that I accidentally murdered a comment from James Nicoll, who was crying off for lack of knowledge.

D^2, you're right about Treasury forecasting. Pretty much every year from 1997 to today the Tories wanked themselves into a lather about some IMF/Item Club/whatever forecast of BROWN'S BLACK HOLE!!!, and the Treasury forecast eventually turned out to be right.

Regarding a road across Africa, you really are bizarrely Edwardian, aren't you? I seem to remember somebody saying this about you on CIF..

If one's prepared to regard Keynes as the last of the Edwardians rather than the first of the moderns, then yeah. More like the fag end of Edwardian intellectua, running out of steam and giving up on humanity in the 1930s. All of my favourite literature and most of my favourite music is from that period.

The thing is that the infrastructure is being build but not North-South, rather it is regional integration that is slowly taking place. And the infrastructure is being built by the Chinese.

I know that for 20 years in Ghana, we were told by the traditional donors that there was no point to build dual carriageways - our economies wouldn't support it. Now they are changing their tune and well, those unfussy Chinese have had 15 years slowly building up expertise doing infrastructure in Africa. Now even the DFID is thinking about sanctioning major infrastructure as opposed to the small scale and NGO-focused approach...

Yes, the thinking has done a 180 hasn't it - people are gradually realising that dual carriageways are more or less the only roads worth building, because they can support enough value traffic to make the road worth maintaining. It's B-roads and the like that can't be supported.